The Relational Organization of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

By B. Spigel. 2017

1,876 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems have emerged as a popular concept to explain the persistence of high–growth entrepreneurship within regions. However, as a theoretical concept ecosystems remain underdeveloped, making it difficult to understand their structure and influence on the entrepreneurship process. The article argues that ecosystems are composed of 10 cultural, social, and material attributes that provide benefits and resources to entrepreneurs and that the relationships between these attributes reproduce the ecosystem. This model is illustrated with case studies of Waterloo, Ontario, and Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The cases demonstrate the variety of different configurations that ecosystems can take.

Subfields: Accounting, Economics and Econometrics, Management of Technology and Innovation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/715cda3045421257ac4bea1fd7f47a8ad327bef6

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Citations in the corpus

Measuring Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (2016, background): “And on the other hand, the Netherlands performs rather bad on accessibility of SME loans (see Gomez and Stam 2017), which means that a relatively high score on the finance element might still be a substantial constraint in the ecosystem.”
Developing and governing entrepreneurial ecosystems: the structure of entrepreneurial support programs in Edinburgh, Scotland (2016, background): “Ecosystems represent the regional economic, social, and cultural environment within a region that provides support and resources for growthoriented entrepreneurs (Spigel, 2015, Stam, 2015).”
Myth-busting and entrepreneurship policy: the case of high growth firms (2017, background): “So while universities may be marginal in terms of their direct contribution to the high growth population, they nevertheless play a key role in shaping the overall entrepreneurial ecosystem within which growth-oriented businesses form and grow (Mason and Brown 2014; Spigel 2015).”
Towards a process theory of entrepreneurial ecosystems (2018, background): “While there is not yet a single agreed-upon definition or typology of ecosystems, Spigel (2017) suggests that while there may be disagreement about the exact mixture of elements constituting an entrepreneurial ecosystem, they can be broadly categorized as cultural, social, or material.”
The digital entrepreneurial ecosystem (2017, neutral): “^ Entrepreneurial Ecosystems are complex socioeconomic structures that are brought to life by individual-level-action (Spigel 2015).”
An effectual leadership perspective for developing rural entrepreneurial ecosystems (2018, background): “Spigel (2017) suggests, and Spigel and Harrison (2018: 153) note, that there may be confusion Babout the exact mixture of elements constituting an entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
Searching for the existence of entrepreneurial ecosystems: a regional cross-section growth regression approach (2017, background): “Even though the analogy with the natural and biological ecosystems cannot be upheld in all details (Holling 2001), the concept has proven very useful to signify those elements directly relevant to the entrepreneurial value chain (Adner and Kapoor 2010; Spigel 2015).”
The development, growth, and performance of university spin-offs: a critical review (2019, background): “In these ecosystems, USOs have likely been forerunners in building entrepreneurial ecosystems within and around the university (Spigel, 2017).”
The emerging role of university spin-off companies in developing regional entrepreneurial university ecosystems: The case of Andalusia (2019, background): “…Helix approach of university–government– industry relations (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000), the Quadruple Helix (Carayannis and Campbell, 2009), the national innovation system (Freeman, 1987), the regional innovation systems (Benneworth et al., 2017), and the ecosystem approach (Spigel, 2017).”
Regional industrial restructuring resulting from individual and system agency (2018, background): “Similarly, the approach of ‘entrepreneurial ecosystems’ (Stam 2015; Spigel 2017) has moved focus from the firm-level as drivers of entrepreneurship to also include discussions of contextual factors underpinning entrepreneurship activity.”
Knowledge-Based Regional Economic Development: A Synthetic Review of Knowledge Spillovers, Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (2018, background): “The entrepreneurial ecosystems approach has recently gained popularity (Feld, 2012; Isenberg, 2011; Qian et al., 2013; Spigel, 2017; Stam, 2015).”